Wednesday, November 15, 2006

Cappella Clausura - first concert of the year!

I still have laryngitis. It's getting better, but extremely slowly. I'm trying to take every precaution, since...

I have a concert this weekend! Two, in fact - please come to one of them!

Cappella Clausura is one of the choirs I joined in September. I am really excited about being part of this group, because my fellow singers have some great voices, and the conductor really knows her stuff. It's an all-women's ensemble in Boston (Newton, actually) that specializes in music written by women, and specifically by women who were in cloisters, or "clausurae". However, this concert will not only feature music by Vizzana and Aleotti, two nuns from the sixteenth century, but also some music by Patricia Van Ness, a contemporary composer from our area. (One of the pieces we will perform was written for Peter Sykes and the First Church in Cambridge, MA.)

Whenever one hears that a concert will specialize in music by a minority, in this case women, one tends to wonder, "Am I going to hear really good music that I haven't heard before because women faced such prejudice? Or am I going to hear not particularly good music that people are trying to perform in an effort to be politically correct?" I can assure you that this concert falls squarely in the former category. I knew none of the composers on our concert before we started rehearsals (except for Van Ness) and that's a crying shame, because this music is just as good as the music written by men from the Renaissance and early Baroque that I've performed all my life. And one set of madrigals we're performing was written by a sixteen-year-old! Mozart was far more boring at sixteen than Aleotti (and set far less passionate texts!) So come and hear some new music that's centuries old.

SATURDAY NOVEMBER 18th at 8:00 PMSUNDAY NOVEMBER 19th at 4: 00 PM

Tickets $15/$12 SATURDAY at Episcopal Parish of the Messiah EMAIL: info@clausura.org for reservations or call 617-964-6609,

About Me

My name is Allegra Martin, and I am a Boston-area choral conductor and singer. My jobs include: music director of Cantilena, a women's chorale in Arlington; choral conductor at Lasell College and director of the Lasell Village Voices of Experience; and music director of First Parish Cohasset. I sing in the area with Anthology, Schola Cantorum, and anyone who will hire me! I also teach private lessons in sight-reading, theory, and conducting.